Review/Art; The Intimate Grandeur Of Old Italian Drawings

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: January 14, 1994

You don't have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to know that a good sequel is hard to make. When William M. Griswold and Linda Wolk-Simon, curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, set out to organize "16th-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections," they knew they had their work cut out for them. The predecessor of their effort, a three-part show of 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings organized at the Metropolitan in 1965 by Jacob Bean and Felice Stampfle, had set a high standard and, they feared, had left no stone unturned.

Thus, Mr. Griswold, who is associate curator in the department of drawings and prints, and Ms. Wolk-Simon, assistant curator of the Robert Lehman Collection, set out to locate a relatively new batch of stones. Their goal was to give as full an account of the period as possible, while reflecting developments in Italian Renaissance scholarship since 1965.

Opting out of the quattrocento, since Italian drawings from the 1400's are relatively rare and for the most part firmly established in public collections, they concentrated exclusively on cinquecento drawings that had entered New York collections since 1965, or those that had been reattributed, or attributed for the first time, since Mr. Bean's shows.

Originally intended as a 70th-birthday tribute to Mr. Bean, who was the founding curator of the Met's department of drawings, this splendid exhibition became a memorial tribute when he died in September 1992. It is a fitting homage, for it turns out that the area of 16th-century Italian drawings has been surprisingly active during the last 28 years, with works of high quality changing hands, being discovered or studied in depth for the first time.

One of the first works to be encountered here, Correggio's "Two Apostles With Putti," was unknown until 1992: a small, red-chalk drawing of wonderful lightness that is especially remarkable for the contrasting psychological states of the two figures. The face of one is young, open and a trifle bewildered; the other is older, his sharper features furrowed in almost angry concentration.

Also here is a rare landscape study, distinguished by its lush massings of line, that was attributed to Parmigianino only 12 years ago. Another standout among the new attributions is a red-chalk drawing of a seated Sibyl, now thought to be by a Roman painter named Pirro Ligorio, rather than by del Piombo; its almost grotesquely large hands and heavy profile suggest a distant relative of the monumental, thick-featured figures that dominated Picasso's art in the early 1920's.

In other words, Mr. Griswold and Ms. Wolk-Simon had more than enough to choose from. Their impressive show brings together over 120 drawings -- from the Metropolitan, the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, as well as more than 20 private collections. A few returns from the Bean shows have been allowed, including a magnificent study for a tomb whose attribution has been upgraded from probably to definitely a Michelangelo. It is an exhibition that anyone interested in drawing -- its history, its diverse media, its scholarship and, above all, its enduring intimacy and directness -- will want to see.

In all, the show reflects the scope of ambition, sensibility and possibility that made 16th-century Italy one of art history's greatest epochs. At nearly every turn, we are reminded that the century was astoundingly rich in talent as well as in the public and private commissions that then gave that talent full expression, and that during its span drawing came into its own as a medium. (This coming of age reflected many developments, including the greater availability of paper, the new habit, initated by Vasari, of collecting drawings and, perhaps, even the complexity of design encouraged by the mastery of one-point perspective.)

The show, on the lower level of the Metropolitan's Lehman Wing, encompasses the major schools of Italian cinquecento draftsmanship and devotes a wall or gallery to each: Emilia, Florence, Genoa, Lombardy and the Piedmont, Rome, Umbria and the Marches, Siena, and Venice and the Veneto. The sections devoted to Florence and Rome form its strongest pillars, but save extra time for the wall of drawings by artists from Siena.

The Siena section proceeds with nary a drop in quality, and counts among its most impressive offerings two large, delicate yet loosely drawn heads by Giovanni Bazzi (called Il Sodoma), a shadowy oil sketch of St. Mark by Domenico Beccafumi, a sheet of animated figure studies by Alessandro Casolani, and a deft little rendering in red and black chalk of a family at prayer that is, according to the label, "most likely" by Ventura Salimbeni, although previously attributed to Federico Zuccaro. One of the most intriguing drawings here is a red chalk of a woman with her back turned by Francesco Vanni in which the attire, pose and fluidity of line makes one think immediately of Watteau. (Another sheet that points into the future is "Head of a Woman," attributed to Alessandro Allori; both its refinement of touch and the levelness of the subject's gaze evoke Ingres.)